


[Translation] flesh banquet

by oysters (aeber)



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, PTSD(?), basically aziraphale gets hurt and crowley has to deal with Emotions, translation because I have no original ideas of my own, which he is very bad at dealing with by the way
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 06:44:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20372410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeber/pseuds/oysters
Summary: It is proven that there is no living being that can possess evil greater than the human teenager.in short: crowley takes care of aziraphale after a particular accident





	[Translation] flesh banquet

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [【好兆头 CA】血肉之餐 flesh banquet](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19289605) by [kujyo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kujyo/pseuds/kujyo). 

> Author notes:  
tw violence and torture, angel stans we’re all going to hell
> 
> Translator's notes: 
> 
> so i’ve been telling myself i’d make my bilingual-ness useful for years now, then i saw a fic so good i asked for permission to translate on impulse haha now time to ruin it with bad writing and mistranslation
> 
> it should also be noted that, without spoiling too much, 'sacrificial banquet' has been suggested by my lovely beta since the title got a bit lost in translation but as this one was written by the original author I've decided to stick with this
> 
> A massive thank you to [dawn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dawn_Blossom/pseuds/effanineffableplans) (go read her fics you definitely won’t regret it!!) for beta'ing my ridiculous lexical mistakes and being patient with my occasional loss of brain cells. She also write a Lot, writes Very Well and Very Efficiently, I'm honestly terrified of her
> 
> anyways thank you and enjoy!

It is proven that there is no living being on earth that can possess evil greater than the human teenager.

There are war criminals. There are corporate owners. And then there’s the implicit temptation of _what if_ among other things steeped into the bright, exciting thing called youth, when every warning seems not so much like a consequence but a suggestion.

Little transgressions, littered here and there, innocuous enough at first glance, but performed with so much malice, so much intention to hurt,

—that it would certainly be, without a doubt, evil.

Of course, this would be subjecting them to a multitude of unfair stereotypes such as the belief that all angels are omniscient creatures of God, which is entirely untrue. Aside from what the church would like you to think, in fact, neither angel nor demon prove to be suitably astute when it comes to the matter of human beings.

Case in point: angels that insist upon shouting ‘pornography’ in the open, or demons that think ‘ciao’ is a kind of food.

There are exceptions to everything. 

The rare handful of teenagers with all the goodness of a wingless cherub, for example. Or, if you would, a certain angel and a certain demon. Something more tangible, you say, and I give you the manic-eyed teen whose sins could put a demon’s whole career to shame.

Or, for instance, on one particular day, Aziraphale realizes he doesn’t understand humans as much as he thought he did. At least, not human teenagers, anyways.

-

It all unravels one rainy post-notpocalyptic afternoon.

Aziraphale sits primly on the sofa, steaming cup of cocoa in one hand and a paperback in another. A sip scalds the roof of his mouth, as expected. Not that a little heat could deter him from his cocoa, though it has remarkably tried its best to for the last three hundred years or so.

Another sip. It is at this moment that he feels it, the telltale tingling of a summoning somewhere calling for him. It comes as a surprise; it’s the first he’s gotten since the war, after all.

Haven’t had one of these in a while, he thinks. The mug thumps lightly against the table, the book forgotten on the desk. He rights his bowtie with a deft tug.

A blink and he’s standing in an unfamiliar room. A slight gust of wind pools around him in a flurry of displaced air. A circle of candles is melting onto the worn wooden floor, illuminating the several shoddy teenagers crowded around him with a hazy glow.

He pauses, wrings his hands uncertainly and awkwardly settles on giving them a cheerful wave.

“Hello, children. How can I help you?”

“Oh— shit, we actually did it.”

One of them gasps, eyes bright with giddy delight. His tattered black shirt is a mess of what Aziraphale thinks is a large strip of cloth dunked into a nest of cobwebs.

“It works.” The boy behind him grins, brandishing his sharpened nails as if they were some sort of weapon. “This is so _fucking cool_.”

The room is as dark as it is foreboding. He can barely see beyond the little stumps of wax stuck around the circle, and even so he can only catch the metallic glint of various unpleasant looking tools lying haphazardly on the floor.

Aziraphale, of all people, knows he shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, though he’s inclined to think otherwise when said cover involves occult symbols scribbled over every available surface.

He swallows, taking a hesitant step back and when he does, his soles hiss with the intensity of water thrown upon hot coals. Smoke curls up from beneath his shoes to snake under the hem of his trousers.

The source of it all is obvious once he’s been painfully alerted to it. He has to squint, but under the chalk is another circle drawn in blood. Goat’s blood.

Oh, heavens. How did he not notice. And he’d waved at them like an idiot.

He attempts to snap his fingers in a frantic hurry. He can’t. His joints lock on command and his entire body shudders as his wings shred into existence out of his control.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me. Are those for real?” Cobwebs (as Aziraphale nicknames him) gushes, staring intently at his pair of wings.

“Oh, it’s the real thing alright. He’s going to love this.” The boy with the green eyes grins, waving for Nails to scurry into the darkness.

Aziraphale wonders, with a sense of impending doom, where this is all headed.

He hears the sound of metal clinking in the darkness. The distinct screech of cold iron on rust, and the echo of footsteps ringing around his torture chamber.

Aziraphale will not be able to forget the events of today for thousands of years to come.

He’s wrestled effortlessly onto the ground, grubby hands seizing the base of his wing as the tip of the knife digs into the tender flesh. A shriek of pain tears itself from his throat, or would have, if he had retained any control over his trembling body.

The hacksaw glints, rises and falls to part feather from feather, flesh from bone. He bleeds and bleeds without mercy, a deluge of dull, bruised scarlet trickling down the roughened floor, dyeing his feathers a bright, bright red.

And, inevitably, he screams, a silent hymn as a prayer to the heavens. The children squeal with frenzied delight. They _love_ it.

At this rate, he’s really going to discorporate.

There’s blood everywhere. Spilt from his disjointed bones, dribbling down his back, and the growing puddle that fills the air with not a coppery tang but the pungent smell of rich wine.

They’ve torn off his left wing completely. The shorn-off bits of bone and skin cling onto their wet hands as they run their fingers over the limp, shredded muscle.

The boy with the green eyes- seemingly the leader of this unruly pack, grips Aziraphale’s chin to lift his tear-stricken face. “He’s crying. Sobbing, even.”

“—How should we deal with him?”

“Aren’t you going to cut off the other side?” Nails asks, fingers twitching. If the boss wasn’t going to do anything with it, well, then perhaps he could take it for himself.

“Nah, not enough space on the walls. Too many bear heads and antlers and whatnot. Oh,” the boy turns to Aziraphale, “but don’t worry. Yours is going up the living room. Right up the center.”

Aziraphale shivers, and cracks open an eye to takes a good, long look of the boy standing over him. Forest green eyes. Red hair. Speaking of red hair.

Almost, but not quite. There’s no point in denying it now. He aches for him. 

“Come on now, we have more exciting things to do.”

The redhead rummages around to pull out a piece of parchment. Aziraphale’s stomach lurches on sight.

It’s Crowley’s signature sigil, coiled and hissing.

“We’ll sacrifice the angel to the demon,” the boy continues, visibly riled. “We’ll watch as he devours the angel until he’s been stripped to his entrails.”

Aziraphale had witnessed the invention of the guillotine. Brilliant machine, brilliant efficiency. He’d heard of the torturing they did in hell by word of mouth with all its hellfire and whips, but none even came close to how evil, how unhinged, how unfound—

He winces as the blood soaks the parchment, as each candle is relit.

It’s going to be a bloodbath. He makes a weak noise of protest as an attempt to stop them. Not a glance spared towards him, of course, as the paper crumbles into soot and dust.

Crowley’s day had gone terribly so far.

Shitty weather, shitty traffic. He’d swung by the bookshop to see the angel gone without his cup of cocoa, and Aziraphale never leaves his cocoa untouched. Never. The moment those humans summoned him was the moment he decided that that was where he’d vent his frustrations for the day.

He arrives, hands shoved into his pockets, boots skidding across the floor as he glowers through his shades.

“What the fuck do you want. I’m busy, if you filthy buggers couldn’t tell already—”

The smell hits him. The rosy aroma of alcohol grinds him to a halt as he pivots on a heel, only to find the angel doused in blood, one wing splayed on the floor and a gurgling mass of blood where the other should have been.

The floor is strewn with feathers. Feathers that Aziraphale used to stroke so lovingly, feathers so often preened to perfection, feathers now reduced to nothing but a pile of bloodied, unrecognizable sludge.

He sees the bruised, blackish liquid dripping off the rusted teeth of the hacksaw, dripping off the blade of the knife, dripping off— what in the heavens, is that a dismembered _wing_— and all over their bloody little hands, the fragrant smell of spirit and wine—

The parchment bursts into flames. The candles and sigils roar into a blazing fit, filling the room with a burnt, metallic taste.

Aziraphale shudders as warmth returns to his limbs. A part of him wants to curl up and drop into restful unconsciousness, but no, he needs to do something, anything, before Crowley turns this entire place into a slaughterhouse.

Crowley, with all his hissing, smouldering fury, seethes as he stalks towards the children cowering against the wall.

“Wasss it you?”

“What, n-no!”

“Wasss it you lot that touched my angel?”

“Oh god—”

“Have you sssseen him.” He gestures vaguely, swaggering. “He has the most ridiculous obsession with his clothes.”

Behind him, Aziraphale drags himself forward by a fraction of an inch.

“—the most fetching feathers. A little scuffled, sure, but lovely nonetheless. And his wings—”

Crowley touches the white feather in his breast pocket.

“What the hell did you do to my angel?”

His breath flares with wisps of flame. Scales the color of fire bloom up up his neck, marring the skin beneath his molten, slit eyes. Just a little further. Aziraphale clenches his teeth, pulls himself forward with every last ounce of strength and closes his fingers around Crowley’s ankle.

Crowley snaps to attention. He slams the children to the wall with a wave of his hand and leaves them hanging by some unseen chokehold.

“Crowley, stop, I beg of you.”

“But- your wings! your clothes! your feathers!”

“They are children.”

“They must _pay_.”

“Please.”

Aziraphale sighs, and drops against Crowley’s shoulder. Crowley softens.

“Angel, you need to rest.”

He cradles Aziraphale to his chest and spins to release the boys against the wall.

“I’ll see you little brats in hell.”

He snaps his fingers. The feathers and blood vanish without a trace. The demon and angel as well. Three boys remain with no memory of why they were there.

For the rest of their lives they will dream. They will dream and relive the same blood-soaked scene over and over again, and bask in wakeful punishment till death releases them into eternal penance.

**Author's Note:**

> this is honestly my first time translating so forgive me if I’ve done anything horrifically wrong,, i’m also not a native english speaker but i might as well be with how bad I am with my mother language lol
> 
> thank you for reading! i will update Soon


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